Optical communication has revolutionized how information is transmitted. Mass-produced semiconductor lasers transmit multiple-wavelength optical signals over low-loss, low-dispersion optical fibers, modulated at multi-gigabit per second (GB/s) rates, for hundreds of kilometers. Text, voice, audio, and video data are all transmitted around the globe utilizing optical fibers, supporting both wired and wireless communication systems.
Optical fiber communication has moved into lower cost, yet still high performance applications, such as metro access networks and enterprise LAN backbones. Single-mode fiber (SMF) is poised to replace short copper links in high data rate, 10 GB/s and above, applications.
As data networks scale to meet ever-increasing bandwidth requirements, the shortcomings of copper data channels are becoming apparent. Signal attenuation and crosstalk due to radiated electromagnetic energy are the main impediments encountered by designers of such systems. They can be mitigated to some extent with equalization, coding, and shielding, but these techniques require considerable power, complexity, and cable bulk penalties while offering only modest improvements in reach and very limited scalability. Free of such channel limitations, optical communication has been recognized as the successor to copper links.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.